Business is war

[marcusm]

Wanted a catchy title .

Anyway. There is a shortage of good serious business sims. Last good one, was Capitalism 2. None
of the others have any real value for me. I am not so interested in stock market sims either.

Matrixgames makes wargames and Business is a form of war without bloodshed (at least the legal variety).
Many business strategies borrow heavily from Sun Tzu.s classic work.

Capitalism 2 is good but I could do without those "Sim City" aspects. I prefered the clean layout of Cap Plus.

I personally would like to see something more current in this field from eg. Matrixgames. Why not even try to get
Trevor Chan to join up in some capacity?

Thank you for listening/reading.

[cragpider]

I agree with marcusm, I'd love to see you guys come up with a good business game, a lot of your more popular wargames such as FoF, GoA and to a lesser degree Hornet Leader have some aspects of economics and logistics control. How about it?

[marcusm]

Only two people who like business sims?

Noone likes building the next Nokia, Microsoft or CISCO .

Btw, one thing they could have improved on Cap2. Themed settings like the first Cap.
I want the ability to play a more focused game rather than build the super conglomerate that most do.
Nokia didn't become big until they threw away all the crappy business parts.

[sabre1]

Count me in! I loved Capitalilsm.  I like games that teach real life skills, as long as they are entertaining.[;)]

[Zakhal]

Id like to see a new version of Detroit - the sim where you try to build better and better cars:http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/detroit

As for pure money sims not so. If I want to just make money Ill get a second job.

[Marauders]

War is business.
 
Big business.
 

[marcusm]

Well it would make a novel topic for a game (a war business game hehe).
Detroit was fun, I am also a fan of airline manager games.

Capitalism lacked a few things I would like to see. I was in fact part of the alpha testing for Cap2 for a short time
but Ubi Soft just wouldn't listen to anything. They just wanted "cool" stuff. Cap2 stil became ok I guess.

Take Anti-Trust laws for instance. They do set boundaries for how much you can dominate and other things
like trends, environmental/health reports and so son.

[Widell]

ORIGINAL: marcusm
I am also a fan of airline manager games.

Here's one that has been in development for some time. Personally I don't like the "subscribe to play" business model, but the scale of the thing may require that model for it to work: AirwaySim.

Another one here which seems released, but it didn't really catch my interest.

And a third one that is close to getting my interest (but I'm occupied defending Crete in AT right now, so no time for exploring this one....plus the registration was chunky = Not seeming to work at all[:@])

Well, well, not enough time for airline sims right now....

[marcusm]

Too damn dry for me. Capitalism, Detroit etc managed to put in a game in the midst of everything .

Even those super expensive board games they had in the MBA courses had a game baked into everything. Just having
lots of charts and stuff doesn't make a game.

[cdbeck]

I love business sims, Railroad Tycoons, Rollercoaster Tycoons, et al. Industry Giant II Gold looked pretty fun, but will not run on nVidia. There have been some other types of transport industry games, but they tend to really be low budget or not very popular (like Freight Tycoon). I love the types (like Capitalism) where you build your own products and sold them, very fun. Sadly, these games do not have mass appeal.

SoM

[marcusm]

Well, most of the time games with mass appeal doesn't appeal to me either.

Capitalism did find it's own niche among economic classes. Those "games" used to cost thousands of dollars and Capitalism offered a viable alternative.

[orwell]

I'd love to see a game that addressed all aspects of society, and treated war how it really is: the sideshow, not the main feature. In moments of megalomania I pretend to toil towards this goal on my own, but then it's back to reality.

[marcusm]

Well. There is almost a game like that.
Made by these guys.

www.battlegoat.com

But I still want a proper business sim .

[Goblin]

ORIGINAL: Son_of_Montfort

I love business sims --- Rollercoaster Tycoons,

SoM

I love RCT3. I just cannot stop playing the thing more than a few weeks, and I go back to it again. [:D]



Goblin

[SireChaos]

ORIGINAL: marcusm

Wanted a catchy title .

Anyway. There is a shortage of good serious business sims. Last good one, was Capitalism 2. None
of the others have any real value for me. I am not so interested in stock market sims either.

Matrixgames makes wargames and Business is a form of war without bloodshed (at least the legal variety).
Many business strategies borrow heavily from Sun Tzu.s classic work.

Capitalism 2 is good but I could do without those "Sim City" aspects. I prefered the clean layout of Cap Plus.

I personally would like to see something more current in this field from eg. Matrixgames. Why not even try to get
Trevor Chan to join up in some capacity?

Thank you for listening/reading.

I´m currently studying Economics & Business Administration, and I couldn´t agree more with you about the need for good business sims.

Capitalism 2 was pretty good, but (I) it is now awfully old, and LOOKS awfully old and (II) it does not run too well on a modern system.
Industry Giant 2 and Transport Giant are/were also pretty decent games, IMHO, and so were the first two Railroad Tycoon games (I didn´t play any of the subsequent ones).

[marcusm]

I enjoyed most of those other sims too (at least RCT 1) but I still see a slight difference
betweeen the classic tycoon game and games like Capitalism. Capitalism is in fact an excellent training tool
and for me personally an inspiration source when I am brainstorming new business ideas.

Regarding Stock Market sims. This was the weakest parts of the Cap games. It wasn't very realistic. Yet a pure Stock market game doesn't interest me. I wouldn't say no to a business sim borrowing ideas from the best stock games though.

[SireChaos]

ORIGINAL: marcusm

I enjoyed most of those other sims too (at least RCT 1) but I still see a slight difference
betweeen the classic tycoon game and games like Capitalism. Capitalism is in fact an excellent training tool
and for me personally an inspiration source when I am brainstorming new business ideas.

I wouldn´t go *that* far, but Cap2 was indeed the best *serious* business sim I have ever played. The "... Tycoon" games are more lightweight, but fun.

Regarding Stock Market sims. This was the weakest parts of the Cap games. It wasn't very realistic. Yet a pure Stock market game doesn't interest me. I wouldn't say no to a business sim borrowing ideas from the best stock games though.

Yeah... a business sim that includes stock, bond and futures that work more or less like in reality, that would be very nice.

[Phatguy]

airbucks...detroit....hmmmm brings back tons of fond memories. if matrix popped out a car,rail or air management games i would be so over it.as long as they werent charging 70 bucks for it. these days i have to limit myself to 50 max per game.

[marcusm]

There definately seems to be a dry out in this area. 

[Widell]

OK - Here's the one I finally found (and of course ended up buying!). It's actually pretty interesting, although I guess some will find it dry. It does have some strange solutions: The download is 32 (!) single files + one more to get the latest update. There's a d/l limit in place, so I ended up with one file too little to be able to install. Quick response from their support guys, but the excuse that "many users don't have internet access allowing one big download" seems a little bit old fashioned. Anyways, the game installs and plays pretty much OK. The GUI suffer from some less than perfect logic solutions at times, so one has to really read what you are supposed to do, and there's the occasional run time error showing the whole thing is still somewhat in development. Overall seems like a sim for those into commercial aircraft. I'm not passed the first year (1946) yet, so I can't say if there's much of a challenge yet.

Link is here: http://www.airlinesimulation.com/ but the site doesn't provide much information really. Let me know if someone wants a few screens and details of my ongoing airline.